The Tripura police have arrested 23 Rohingyas, including several women and children, from two different places in North Tripura district when they were about to board buses to first go to Guwahati and then to Hyderabad by train in search of jobs, officials said on Friday.
The operation began on Thursday evening and continued into the night. Police teams from both Churaibari and Dharmanagar were involved in detaining these individuals, with sixteen adults and seven minors among those apprehended.
The detainees told the police that they entered Tripura from Bangladesh through Sonamura in Sepahijala district and Kailashahar in Unakoti district and intended to go to Guwahati by bus and then to Hyderabad by train in search of jobs.
There were no valid travel documents with the Rohingyas who left their camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar before illegally entering India with the help of touts, Police officials said.
The initial detentions occurred at the Churaibari police checkpoint on National Highway 8, where officers conducted a routine search of a night super bus.
During the inspection, they found inconsistencies in the statements of two men and three women passengers. Further questioning at the police station revealed that these individuals were refugees from the Rohingya camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Later at around 9 pm, Dharmanagar police detained an additional sixteen Rohingya refugees at the local ISBT.
This group comprised eleven adult men and five minors. These detainees were also found to be from the Kutupalong and Bhalikhali camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
According to the detainees, each of them had paid brokers Rs. 5,000 to facilitate their crossing of the India-Bangladesh border. However, they could not provide further details about the brokers involved.
Their statements indicated that they had come to Dharmanagar with plans to travel to Jammu and Kashmir.
To recall, around 100 Bangladeshi nationals, including women and children, have been arrested from the Agartala railway station in the past two months.
Notably, Tripura chief Minister Dr Manik Saha who also holds Home portfolio held a meeting with top BSF and other security agencies on Thursday night and asked them to maintain strict vigil along the border and take appropriate steps to prevent the infiltration of Bangladeshi nationals into the Indian territory.
Dr Saha wrote in his X-handle, “Had a meeting with the BSF and other security agencies to review the issues relating to human trafficking, smuggling and other border related crimes. Directed them to take effective steps to stop all the illegal activities on the Indo- Bangladesh border. All the necessary assistance will be provided by the State Government for this purpose”.
(Tripura, Tripura News)
